Glioblastoma radiomics to predict survival: Diffusion characteristics of surrounding nonenhancing tissue to select patients for extensive resection

Abstract Background and Purpose Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive primary CNS neoplasm with poor overall survival (OS) despite standard of care. On MRI, GBM is usually characterized by an enhancing portion (CET) (surgery target) and a nonenhancing surrounding (NET). Extent of resection is a long debated issue in GBM, with recent evidence suggesting that both CET and NET should be resected in <65 years old patients, regardless of other risk factors (i.e., molecular biomarkers). Our aim was to test a radiomic model for patient survival stratification in <65 years old patients, by analyzing MRI features of NET, to aid tumor resection. Methods Sixty‐eight <65 years old GBM patients, with extensive CET resection, were selected. Resection was evaluated by manually segmenting CET on volumetric T1‐weighted MRI pre and postsurgery (within 72 h). All patients underwent the same treatment protocol including chemoradiation. NET radiomic features were extracted with a custom version of Pyradiomics. Feature selection was performed with principal component analysis (PCA) and its effect on survival tested with Cox regression model. Twelve months OS discrimination was tested by t ‐test followed by logistic regression. Statistical significance was set at p <0.05. The most relevant features were identified from the component matrix. Results Five PCA components (PC1‐5) explained 90% of the variance. PC5 resulted significant in the Cox model ( p = 0.002; exp(B) = 0.686), at t ‐test ( p = 0.002) and logistic regression analysis ( p = 0.006). Apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)‐based features were the most significant for patient survival stratification. Conclusions ADC radiomic features on NET predict survival after standard therapy and could be used to improve patient selection for more extensive surgery.